the people of my ummah will neither worship [i.e. commit the shirk of worship of] the Sun and the Moon, nor would they worship stones [graves] or statues. Instead their deeds will be [full of shirk of] hypocrisy’ ” (Mishkaat, page 455). Let us now understand how an act of hypocrisy becomes shirk. The essence of an act of worship is to present oneself to the Lord. This is to pave the way to get closer to Him. But such an act can be corrupted by the desire of getting recognition of one’s piety by others. The pollution of an act that was purely meant for Allah by such hypocrisy is shirk of pretence (as opposed to shirk of worshipping another deity) because an act solely meant for Allah is now no longer just for Him. The Holy Prophet ﷺtherefore, elucidated that the ummah will indulge in shirk of hypocrisy and pretence but not in shirk of worship.
The ummah would yield to pleasures of worldly affairs but not indulge in shirk Sayyidina ‘Aqba bin ‘Aamir � narrated: The Holy Prophet ﷺsaid, “By Allah I am not afraid that after me you will commit shirk, but I am afraid that worldly life will tempt you and cause you to compete with each other for it” (Bukhari, hadith 1334/3594). Let us now look at what type of shirk this hadith is negating, and from what kind of people. In present times, everyone, regardless of their credentials, is keen to offer interpretation of the Scripture according to their understanding. This leads to a medley of confusion and the only way to bypass this is to seek guidance from the sayings of the Holy Prophet ﷺ.
